Jeremy Cherfas

February 17, 2009February 17, 2009

Mapping sustainability

Resilience Science points to many efforts to use community mapping as a force for development and empowerment. Sometimes, in our cups, we dream of a set of globally connected maps devoted to agricultural biodiversity. Something really simple, like performance reports from specific crops, varieties and types of farm could be linked with geodata which in turn would allow it to be linked to all manner of environmental data. It would grow into the database that ate the world, but more to the point could help feed the world.

Of course, dreaming doesn’t make it so, but Green Maps seems to put all the tools at anyone’s disposal. Is anyone out there doing anything for agrobiodiversity? I searched, but couldn’t find anything except for urban outlets for the products of sustainable farms. Important, but not enough.

February 16, 2009February 16, 2009

Nibbles: Rescue, Biofuels, Striga, Dogs, Vegetable seed, Mulberry, Afghanistan, Aquaculture, Abaca

Global Crop Diversity Trust “on track” to reinvigorate 100,000 varieties, “one of the largest and most successful biological rescue efforts ever undertaken”. Jeremy says: “Kariba Dam.”
More reasons to go perennial. And native to boot.
Farmers go crazy with Striga-resistant maize.
Design-a-pooch just around the corner, thanks to genome sequencing. Well it was all worth it then, wasn’t it.
AVRDC teaches Solomons farmers to save seeds, grandma to suck eggs.
Mulberries cryopreserved. Yay! Now for that productivity.
Turning grapes to raisins, swords to plowshares, in Afghanistan.
District Fishery Officer (In-charge) tells of guy “farming in a floodplain adjacent to Coler Beel under the same upazila and earns a net profit of Taka 9 lakh after selling 80 metric tons of harvested fish from the Beel last year.”
Abaca: quantity or quality?

February 15, 2009

The Vegetable Garden

Frank Van Keirsbilck wrote to recommend his web site, The Vegetable Garden, to us. I’m happy to link to it. There’s a ton of information there, in four languages. ¹ The site looks funky and hand-rolled, which is charming although slightly cumbersome, and you may well find things of interest.

February 13, 2009February 13, 2009

Nibbles: Paan, Homegardens, Yams, Apiculture, Sorghum, Asparagus, Vicuna

Paan unwrapped — betel leaf, areca nut.
“We were suffering; we had no food to eat so we tried to make a garden.”
IITA comes up with technique to propagate yams through vine cuttings using carbonized rice husks as growth medium. Worlds beats path to Ibadan.
The Virgin Fresh Apicultural Project is cool, but needs a new name.
Sorghum makes big move from wallboards to gas and booze.
Great Witley sweeter than Peruvian. No, not weed, dude.
The vicuna: use it or lose it. They did, so they didn’t.

February 12, 2009February 12, 2009

Blogging the big birthday: What would Darwin make of Climate Change

No-one escapes our appeal to celebrate Darwin’s birthday. This just in from Andy Jarvis:

JuliÃ¡n lost his blogging virginity just a few days ago with his post on “Is all climate change bad?.” His points are very valid. The wording in IPCC reports is that many crops become more productive with a 2 degree C temperature hike. It is only beyond that, which is expected 2050 onwards, that productivity significantly goes down on a global scale. And a lot can happen between now and then.

Given the historic day, I wondered what Darwin would make of all this? Surely he’d say that there’s nothing like a bit of selection pressure to bring about evolution. And ho boy do we need some evolution — let’s face it, the system is not working particularly well right now, and that is not limited to biology. Nothing like a crisis to bring about social change and promote innovation. So, on this day, I’d like to make a toast to selection pressure, and I hope that it stimulates changes in the fundamental system of agriculture to select against some of the bizarre, environmentally unsustainable practices and socially inequitable policies that are out there.